Weaponizing Scenes: What 'Sweet Smell of Success' Can Teach Us About Conflict

I cannot tell you how exhausting it is to sit and write a screenplay to try to get it to sound both good and like real life. See, real life is boring most of the time. But movies have to be entertaining.

Even when you think you've conquered the scene and wrung all the information you need from it, there are times when I go back and see that it reads flat, predictable, and painfully efficient.

When I get stuck, I like to go back and watch the movies I love to see why they work. And today, I stumbled upon a video dissecting Alexander Mackendrick’s 1957 masterpiece, Sweet Smell of Success.

It was written by Ernest Lehman and playwright Clifford Odets. The film is legendary for its razor-sharp dialogue and for the way it hides a complicated plot in plain sight.

But to get there, the writers struggled with the script, just as we do.

So, let's break down how a simple rewrite transformed a two-person interaction into one of the greatest dialogue scenes in cinema history.

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Functional But Flat

I love any kind of YouTube video that breaks down screenwriting craft. I'm always feeling alone writing features, so it's cool to hear about how this stuff and the feeling of rewriting is universal.

Anyway, in Ernest Lehman’s first draft (based on his own novelette), his introduction of the tyrannical Broadway columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) was pretty straightforward.

We had a scene where the unscrupulous press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) walks up to Hunsecker’s table at the 21 Club and interrupts Hunsecker, who's sitting with sme of his buddies. The trio leaves. Sidney sits, and they discuss why Sidney hasn't broken up Hunsecker’s sister’s romance with a jazz musician.

The scene worked, but it didn't pop.

Director Alexander Mackendrick wanted to find a way with more drama.

So they reimagined the motivations for the scene.

Mackendrick brought in playwright Clifford Odets to polish the pages, and this is how they did it.

1. Up the Stakes Before the Scene Even Starts

In the rewritten version, Odets decided to make J.J. Hunsecker into a mythical figure in the New York nightlife. In fact, he made sure we heard his name mentioned 23 times in the first 20 minutes before we ever saw his face.

That built a total mythos around the guy before we ever even saw him.

So when we finally meet the character in the scene, Odets builds an immediate roadblock. Sidney can’t just stroll up to the table. He has to lure J.J. out using a restaurant phone call.

That shows Sidney is resourceful right away, too.

Now we're layering character and plot.

The point here is to never make it easy for your protagonist to get what they want. If they need to have a conversation, bar the entrance. Make them fight just to get into the room.

'Sweet Smell of Success'Credit: MGM

2. Weaponize Your Exposition

One of the hardest things to do in screenwriting is explaining the mechanics of a world without putting the audience to sleep.

In Sweet Smell of Success , the audience needs to learn exactly how the parasitic ecosystem between press agents and columnists functions.

That's not just dialogue, but worldbuilding.

Again, you have to tackle this scene and find a way in. So, instead of having Sidney explain this to a neutral party, which is flat, Odets introduces a foil character in Senator Walker, who asks the questions the audience is thinking.

Now, all the exposition is motivated.

The takeaway here is that if you must deliver some boring stuff to make the story make sense, deliver it through conflict.

3. The Art of the Three-Way

The last part of Odets' rewrite was to make the dialogue pop and add in some group dynamics.

Throughout this five-minute scene, characters rarely speak to each other directly. Instead, Character A talks to Character B, but they are actually aiming the subtext at Character C.

It's a very strange play, but it works perfectly in this context.

For example, J.J. wants to humiliate Sidney the moment he sits down. Instead of looking at Sidney, J.J. looks at the Senator and says, "I often wish you were deaf and wore a hearing aid... with a simple flick of the switch I could shut out the greedy murmur of little men".

And we know exactly what he really means.

By the time the scene ends, Odets has executed an entire micro-plot with a beginning, middle, and end for three minor characters, while simultaneously deepening the psychological warfare between our two leads.

And that makes the scene pop.

Summing It All Up

Next time you are editing a scene that feels a little too neat, add some conflict. Work on the characters and see if you can add conflict in the scene that's both multilayered and personal.

For more deep dives into classic screenwriting techniques, check out our articles on how to write subtext in dialogue and the secrets to mastering pacing in a scene.

Let me know what you think in the comments.